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Boulder's Caffeine Fix MapLet's face it, Boulderites need their caffeine fix. Here's a map for local and visitors alike to discover some of the city's (and surrounding town's) best places to find a good cup of java.

November 13, 2009

Get out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Turner tells CU audience

Ted Turner spoke at the University of Colorado as part of the Entrepreneurs Unplugged series by Silicon Flatirons Center and the CU Law School.

BOULDER -- Ted Turner’s been called lots of things in his
career – media mogul, entrepreneur, philanthropist, billionaire, rancher,
environmentalist, peacenik and “Mouth of the South.”

He brought a little of all of those to a packed room at the
University of Colorado Friday as part of the Entrepreneurs Unplugged series
organized by CU’s Silicon Flatirons Center and the Law School.

Before his interview, Turner was presented with Silicon
Flatiron’s inaugural Entrepreneurs for Good Prize, a crystal award that
appropriately encased a buffalo.

Having just returned from a pheasant hunting trip in South
Dakota, home to part of his 2 million acres of ranch land, the founder of CNN
and author of “Call Me Ted” told the campus audience that if he were looking
for a job today, it would be in “clean, renewable energy.” It will be a growth
industry, Turner predicted, because “we’re going to win because we are right.”

Next stop on his travels, in fact, is the nation’s capital,
where he’ll be lobbying for a clean energy bill.

Despite the tough odds of overcoming objections of the
powerful coal and oil industries, Turner compared his new environmental mission
to the’80s when he was trying to convince Congress to open up the nation’s TV
airwaves to new satellite technologies.

At the time, he said, all three major TV networks were happy
– carving up major sports events like the NFL between them, producing just 2½
hours of live news each day and reaping hefty profits.

“I wasn’t happy,” he said, “because I wasn’t one of them.”

Turner said he knew he was gambling everything on his vision
for a 24-hour news channel at CNN, but “I knew with certainty that it was going
to work.” Just getting your news at 6 p.m. was “inconvenient” if nothing else.

As a hard-working businessman for all of his life -- working for
his father’s advertising billboard business when he was 12 -- Turner admitted
that the 1996 merger of Turner Broadcasting System with Time-Warner came about
partly because he was just “tired.” As a large Time Warner stockholder, he lost
billions when the stock collapsed after Time Warner merged with AOL.

When he owned both the Atlanta Braves and the Hawks, he would leave his TV business offices and head straight to the games, which turned into
18-hour days. “So I got too tired so I said screw it – I’m done!”

Co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Turner
minces no words calling for the United States to get out of Iraq and
Afghanistan. Now chairman of Turner Enterprises, which oversees all of his
current businesses, including the Ted’s Montana Grill restaurants and ranch land across 12 states, Turner said customers always must be important if you’re
running a business for the long term.

“I became a peacenik,” he said, because when he was running
CNN and the U.S. started bombing people around the world, they were “bombing my
customers.”

The Silicon Flatirons format is an initial interview by Brad
Bernthal, entrepreneurship director for the center. And Bernthal had his hands full trying to keep his guest on
track with several questions as Turner would launch into new subjects.

At one point, Turner said if the U.S. just has to be at war,
why not go with an entrepreneurial spirit and attack Canada. They would
surrender quickly, he joked, and double the land mass of the U.S.

To anyone in the media, Turner said, “I really was just
joking about attacking Canada.”

Turner reads the Economist every week to stay up on world
events, and he likes newspapers. But he also said the newspaper industry model
is similar to the polluting coal industry – “it’s an obsolete technology.” He
wondered aloud who’ll eventually be able to pay to gather the news. “The
bloggers don’t have news organizations,” he said.

In the next 50 years, Turner said, “we have to be smarter
than we’ve ever been.

“If we heat up the world seven to eight degrees, we’re
toast.”

When it comes to new technologies, Turner drew laughs
admitting he’s an old “fuddy-duddy” struggling with too many dials on TV to
figure out how to watch it. But at 70 years old, he admits he’s feeling pretty
good, running his ranches, fly-fishing and campaigning to protect the
environment.